


Night's Return

by XCVG



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, Modern Westeros, POV Original Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:08:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26885635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XCVG/pseuds/XCVG
Summary: A thousand years after the Second Long Night, death and darkness rise in the far north once again. Modern Westeros setting, all new characters. Read the notes inside, it's really an experimental thing I probably won't continue with.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	Night's Return

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve had this bouncing around in my head for a while and couldn't resist writing it. Don’t expect me to continue, I’m just about sick of the world of ice and fire in general to be honest. If I planned to continue this I probably wouldn’t introduce all three plot threads in the opening chapter, especially the last one as it’s very underdeveloped and very obviously tacked on. But here it is, written in a hurry.
> 
> Mostly book canon, though I think the only notable thing is that the term “Great War” is used for a different conflict than the show. A lot of stuff is deliberately left vague because it’s set so much later.
> 
> Warnings: Violence, character death, mentions of war, mentions of genocide, allegories to Nazi Germany, racism, sexism, misgendering. In other words a lot of bad shit packed into one prologue chapter, it is still a Game of Thrones fic after all.

She dreamt.

She dreamt of a downpour of snow so thick it turned blotted out the sky, froze the seas and turned the earth white.

She dreamt of figures she thought she could recognize running away from but disappearing into the encroaching darkness.

She dreamt of dead fish and wilted flowers and frozen wolves and limp snakes fading away into ash and dust, dreadful yet somehow familiar.

She dreamt of shadows mocking the forms of humans rising from the ground, shadows of darkness and death and despair.

She dreamt of a girl with black ice in her hand who disappeared over the horizon and a boy who could see with more than his eyes.

She dreamt of a shadow like a man but somehow _wrong_ , casting a blue glow that pierced her soul, coming together from seemingly nothing.

She dreamt of a sun springing to life and rising over a wall of ice, casting a golden light across the sky that burned the shadows to nothingness.

Lyanna Stark woke up screaming.

She choked back the second scream, panting for breath with her heart going a mile a minute. Her sheets were soaked with cold sweat and she felt on fire and freezing at the same time. Blinking as the familiar surroundings of her room came into focus, she forced herself to breathe deeply and slowly.

Again. The dream had happened again.

She sat up in bed, rubbed her eyes, then padded her way into her beautifully appointed private bathroom. One of the perks of being the Lady of Winterfell. Her ancestors had servants, but she preferred to keep her chambers private. The morning shower helped- it always did. She was well practiced at thinking about _anything_ but the dream as she let the hot water cascade over her body. Today she pondered the irony of the electric point-of-use hot water heater installed in her shower. Once upon a time, natural hot spring water had been piped through the castle’s walls.

Breakfast was already served by the time she made it to the Great Hall. That wasn’t surprising- she was ten minutes late, having slept through her alarm again. A server removed the ornate silver lid from her platter of pancakes and bacon and made herself scarce.

Lyanna ate almost mechanically, still unable to shake the experience of the previous night.

Millie was there with a leather bound folder, as she was every day. Technically, Millie was her assistant and had been since her unexpected rise to Lady of Winterfell. But Lyanna knew she was packing heat under that jacket and was pretty sure she knew which three-letter agency the woman worked for. As she handed over the folder, she asked gently, “The dream again, milady?”

“Yeah,” Lyanna dismissed, opening up the folder. Of course Millie had noticed. “What’s my day look like?”

“You have a luncheon with the Governor at noon until two in the afternoon, to discuss-”

“-to discuss the rezoning of the fields east of Winterfell. I don’t know why he bothers to ask, those haven’t belonged to the Stark family in a hundred years,” she finished with a scowl. “Sorry. I know I’m being bitchy. The dreams are getting worse.”

“Perhaps you should consult someone,” Millie suggested quickly before continuing. A shrink, she meant. “You have an interview with the Wintertown Record at four. I believe Kevan Snow is the reporter. He will likely ask about the museum proposal.”

“I’ll try to give him the official story and not tell him what I really think of _that_.” She pinched her nose and sighed. “Up for a spar, Millie?”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to decline, milady.” As she did every time.

“Your loss.” With that, she pushed her breakfast away, stood, and strode to the end of the hall. Ice sat in its place of honor, hanging on a weirwood plaque on the wall with its scabbard beside it. Lyanna paused for a moment before it, took it from the wall in both hands, paused again, then sheathed it and strapped that to her back.

She slipped her gloves on as she headed outside. The cold blast of wind was hardly a shock and more of a welcome, but she shivered anyway. This was the very yard where her forefathers and- in disappointingly rare cases- her foremothers would have trained with the greatsword. Unlike her, they had been training for war.

She was training for, well, she didn’t know exactly. There was a draw to the sword and she just felt she had to wield it. Lyanna wasn’t exactly sure _why_ she so drawn to Ice. She’d never dreamed of it when she was a girl- she was more into the pretty dresses of ancient nobles than their weapons. When she became the Stark in Winterfell, she used it for ceremonies and nothing else. But a year ago she’d picked it up on a whim, and it just felt _right_. At some point she started training with it, and now she couldn’t imagine a week without swinging the blade.

As she had almost every day for the past year, she drew the sword and began practicing her forms. It had been nightmarishly difficult at first, every muscle in her body screaming with exertion after only a few swings, but every day it got easier. She was noticeably stronger now- something that had attracted both negative and positive press- and it took a longer session to really burn her out.

Still, it wasn’t exactly _easy_.

Really, Ice was too much sword for her. It was light for a greatsword, but it was still a greatsword made for a large man. The thing was as nearly as tall as she was and wider than her hand at its widest point. It was hard to describe to someone who hadn’t seen it how fuckoff huge the sword was. From what she’d read, it might actually be _too big_ , larger than swords that were actually used for combat.

But she was the Stark in Winterfell, and it was her family’s sword.

Well, _sort of_. 

It wasn’t the first sword by that name. It was at least the second and probably the third. The first was from the Age Of Heroes and they knew little about it other than that it _probably_ existed. The second was a Valyrian Steel greatsword, forged in Old Valyria before the Doom and ultimately lost during either Robert’s Rebellion or the War of Five Kings. The one in her hands was also a greatsword, and also of Valyrian Steel, but dated back only to just after the Great War, when a significant quantity of the legendary material surfaced after the defeat of Hegalia.

The Great War. That had been bad business. Untold death and devastation that burned through every corner of the world. New technologies and new ways, but old hatred and old savagery at its very worst. Her own grandfather had died here when a bomb intended for the factories of Wintertown had crashed through the bell tower and blown its top third to pieces.

But it was practically ancient history now. The Great War had ended long before she was born.

Someone- Millie, probably- had set up a series of foam dummies in the yard. Maybe it was childish, but this was her favorite part. There was a wicked grin on her face as she hacked the dummies to pieces. The Valyrian Steel was sharp, sharper than anything short of tungsten carbide. Metallurgists still couldn’t make metal quite like it.

Magic, some said.

Legends spoke of ancient magic in the stones of Winterfell, of the Godswood and the Old Gods, of heroes and monsters, of dragons and blood magic, of the Long Night and the Last Hero.

They were _legends_. Nothing but _myths_.

No doubt there was some truth to them, or at least some of them. The Second Long Night was recent enough that historical records existed. It had been a long, cold winter. Something had come from north of the Wall and wiped out half the North. But they now knew that Planetos wobbled on its axis, something nobody understood on its time. They knew of the cascading effects of albedo on climate. And while they didn’t know exactly what White Walkers were, another branch of intelligent life was a much better explanation than undead zombies. That is if the supposed undead weren’t simply another band of Wildlings.

Misunderstandings of people not yet able to understand the world.

But as she gleefully hacked through a puffy white facsimilie of a man, Lyanna couldn’t help but think about her House’s ancient words.

_Winter Is Coming_

* * *

Jorah Carpenter, ranger of the Night’s Watch, cursed to himself. He was a ranger, had been for decades, but in recent years hadn’t gone beyond the Wall much because of his age and a lack of pressing need. That had suited him. In the rare cases he went on a ranging the jackass of a Lord Commander always forced him to take along a few new recruits in the guise of training. Which meant babysitting them and listening to their endless whinging.

It was a shame, almost. He could appreciate heading beyond the Wall into the untamed wilderness so unlike anything else in the known world. Just him, his horse, and his rifle, like it had been in the old days. Pretending to look for snarks and grumpkins and relics of a past long gone.

This time, though, they were looking for something real. A team of scientists had headed north of the Wall, drilling for ice samples that would prove some theory or other. Their worried colleague had explained the experiment to them at Castle Black, but Jorah didn’t give a fuck then and didn’t give a fuck now. The scientists hadn’t been heard from in a week, she’d said, and were now overdue. They’d probably just frozen to death, more dumb shits that thought life would be easy north of the Wall, and if it was up to him he’d write them off but the Lord Commander had prattled something about a humanitarian mission and that was that.

So here he was out on the tundra with a craven egghead fat enough to roll down the slopes, a girl who thought she was a boy, a gods-damned colonial and their guide, a Wildling savage who probably ate his brothers and fucked his sisters.

Well, if worst came to worse they could always eat the fat boy. Maybe the savage, too- eh, not a great idea. For all their slights against humanity they could survive north of the Wall.

It was abominable how far the Watch had fallen since he had joined all those years ago. First the oath was struck down as “unconstitutional”. Unless they were sentenced by a court, brothers could break their vows freely, and didn’t have to stay at the wall for life. That was one terrible moment for the watch. The second was when that fucking idiot of a Lord Commander had decided that they were going to accept women to the Watch. It was a new decade, he had said, and besides they desperately needed the numbers.

Jorah had been tempted to leave right there and then, walk out the gates of Castle Black as they brought the first black sisters in, but unlike some, he took his vows seriously. _Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death._

He didn’t care what the fuck she said, the girl next to him in the drafty snowcat was not a black brother and he was not going to call her Alyn. No good for a tumble, unlike some of the other black sisters, she had just muttered something about aces and spades and scurried off.

At least she was a decent driver. She slowed the vehicle to a stop as they approached some lumps in the snow that didn’t look quite natural, on the edge of a forest.

Jorah turned to the Wildling and asked curtly, “Is this it?”

He answered in broken Common. “Yes. This is where the, uh, scienticians? fell.”

“Scientists,” Jorah grumbled. “Fucking great, we’ll dig out the corpses and drag them back. Alys, Yohn, stay here. The rest of you lot, with me. Get the shovel on your way out, Bill.”

The girl gritted her teeth and muttered something under her breath, while the egghead just had the same “off in a fantasy land far away” expression he fucking always had on his face. The colonial at least didn’t complain, quickly hopping out of the vehicle and grabbing a snow shovel from the back.

He heard the engine shut off as he trudged toward the lumps. Great. The girl may have been a decent driver but she didn’t have the sense to leave the engine running. With the shoddily maintained engines, substandard fuel, and half-dead batteries the Watch could manage these days they’d be lucky to get it started again in the cold.

Well, he’d best make this quick, then. The longer that engine sat cooling the harder it would be to start. His eyes swept over the mounds before he picked one and jabbed toward it with a gloved finger. “Here.”

The colonial trudged forward and dutifully began digging, shoveling the snow away to reveal _something_. He’d barely started when he stopped suddenly, gripping his shovel tightly.

“Seven hells,” Jorah grumbled, moving up to get a closer look at whatever it was the black brother had dug up. He stopped and paused for a moment when he saw. A severed, frostbitten leg. Oh. It was certainly disconcerting, but it wasn’t like dead body parts were going to jump up and bite anyone. “Well, I think that belonged to one of our scientists.”

“Oh gods,” he heard Bill exclaim before the man violently doubled over and emptied his stomach into the snow. Of all the people in their party he was the one he’d expected that reaction from the least, too.

Fucking scientists. Fucking colonials. Fucking Wildlings.

“You never seen a dead man before? I can tell you it probably wasn’t frostbite that did him in.” He jerked his head toward their guide. “Some of your friends?”

The guide didn’t turn to face him, instead staring at the body with a wide-eyed look on his face. “The _others_!”

“Yeah, what about ‘em?” he asked rhetorically, leaning down and poking the leg with the end of his rifle. Their guide came from some tribe or other that was supposedly the good guys, but the Wildlings were constantly killing each other. Who hated who and who hated the Watch changed every day. It didn’t surprise him in the slightest that some city baby scientists got caught in the crossfire. “Some _other_ tribe, not yours, eh?”

“No, not the tribe. The _others_! The _others_ return!” the Wildling ranted, one hand gripping his spear tightly and the other shaking. “It grows colder. We are dead men.”

“It’s called a weather pattern,” Jorah growled. _You primitive moron_ , he almost added. It _was_ getting colder, and he resisted the urge to pull his parka tighter.

“I’ve got movement,” Bill hissed. In an instant he’d dropped the shovel, unslung his shotgun and aimed it in the direction of the perceived threat.

The ranger dismissed that, though he kept a hand on his rifle. “Calm yourself, it’s just the trees. You’re not back in the sandbox.”

A second later, as if to mock him, something darted out of the treeline. Bill’s shotgun boomed, and it went crashing to the ground. The figure was human, or had once been human, but was now torn up, rotten, and very dead looking. It looked, well, it looked like a fucking zombie covered in ice.

“It’s still alive!” He racked the slide and the shotgun boomed again, obliterating the thing’s head. Its limbs continued to twitch and scrabble. “What the _fuck_ was that?”

“ _Wight_ ,” the Wildling said in a terrified whisper, as if that was supposed to mean something.

Jorah had been accused of arrogance in the past, but he did know when to fold. His rifle was up in his hands, and he flicked the safety off with an unsteady finger. He shouted orders. “Back to the cat! Alys, get that thing started!”

They retreated quickly, taking defensive positions around the snowcat. Bill jumped up on the bed, covering one corner, and he crouched in front of the vehicle, covering the other corner. The Wildling guide crouched across from him and held out his spear like it would do any good. Yohn, the fat brother, aimed a pistol out an open window, a saturday night special of a gun that looked comically small in his hand. Behind his ear the starter motor of the snowcat spun and spun but the engine did not catch.

He shivered. Was it fear or was the temperature dropping every second? “Goddamn it, get that thing started!”

“I’m trying!” the girl who thought she was a boy snapped at him, continuing to fruitlessly fuddle with the ignition.

Something… _something_ emerged from the trees. It was almost human, but it was very wrong, and its eyes seemed to glow bright blue. Fear gripped him as he watched the _thing_ slowly amble toward them. “I don’t know what the fuck that is but in about thirty seconds we’re going to-”

“Got it!” He heard the engine roar to life and then his world exploded with pain and he felt himself thrown to the snow before something crushed his legs and he nearly blacked out with pain.

Jorah realized slowly, too slowly, that the dumb bitch had run over him. Through tunnel vision he saw the snowcat speed backwards, fortunately missing him this time. He thought he shouted someone shout _go_ and then the snowcat was gone.

He was afraid to look at his legs. They were likely a bloody ruin, he couldn’t feel anything but pain. Instead he stared at the Wildling guide and the _thing_. The man poked at the thing with his spear, but it chopped it in half with its sword and then chopped the Wildling in half too.

Where did it get the sword? Where was his rifle?

He still had one hand on the stock. It was a clear shot, clear enough. He shouldered the weapon and put a round straight into where the thing’s heart should have been. And it seemed to do nothing but draw its attention, those unworldly blue eyes now staring straight at him.

With weakening arms he struggled to work the bolt. Up, back, down. He’d done it a thousand times before, why was it so hard? He managed to get another round chambered, then the thing was upon him, ripping the weapon from his hands and tossing it away.

It raised its sword- was that sword made of ice, it looked strange- and brought it down.

* * *

“Dragonflame, dragonflame…”

Ed tapped his fingers against the table, mouthing the words again and again as if that would somehow make them make more sense. Dragonflame with a capital D.

“Are you _still_ obsessing over that?” Tyene asked, rolling her eyes as she sat on Ed’s desk. It creaked under the big Dornishwoman’s weight and he cringed. “King’s Landing is _aflame_ with rumours of the Prime Minister’s affair with the Princess and you’re thinking about _that_?”

Ed scoffed. That was nothing, this was _big_. “Let the tabloids run that story. We already looked into those allegations, they’re baseless.”

She raised an eyebrow. “And rumours of dragons aren’t? Ed, if magic ever existed, it’s been gone from the world for a thousand years. Dragons went extinct centuries before we were born. Bringing them back is pure fantasy.”

“Yeah, well, one billion dragons doesn’t just disappear into a hole in the world,” he countered, his chair creaking as he sat up. “Dragonflame- the name, is a rumour. Bringing back dragons, that’s speculation from some admittedly questionable sources. But the financials are real. That money is disappearing into _something_.”

“Maybe someone’s just embezzling it. Or funneling it into cartels, or black ops, or propping up some foreign government.” Tyene shrugged. “Even if it was possible, nobody wants dragons back enough to spend that kind of money on it.”

“Yeah.” He picked up his pen and flipped it, as if that would somehow give him the story he wanted to run.

“Foreign government,” the woman said after a moment. “If I had to bet, that’s where I’d bet. Funneled to a foreign government, maybe through a cartel or two. Dragonflame’s a good name, you hear it and that’s the last thing you’d think. You think about fairy tales and dragonriders and all that but I guarantee it’s something a lot more boring and a lot more dirty.”

“Which one?” Ed flipped the pen again, then forced himself to drop it back into its holder. “Which foreign government?”

“Up to you to figure out, Ed. Once you do, there’s your story.” With that she stood and walked away.

He leaned back into his chair and sighed. She was probably right, she had a good eye for foreign affairs, but it just didn’t feel right to him.


End file.
